Benedict T. Viviano

Benedict Thomas Viviano O.P., a New Testament scholar and author, is a member of the Chicago Province of the Dominican Order of the Roman Catholic Church. He is on the faculty of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland as a full professor of New Testament teaching in the French language. Before teaching in Fribourg, he taught for 11 years at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem [1], and 12 years at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. He is vice president of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies Jerusalem [2].

He is probably best known for his book "The Kingdom of God in History" [3]and the St. Matthew section of the New Jerome Bible Commentary [4].

Viviano was born January 22, 1940, in St Louis. In a city of French foundation but mainly German population with a strong African American minority, his family belonged to the city's community of Italian people, itself divided into Lombards and Sicilians. He went to a Catholic military high school in St. Louis. After two years of university, he entered the Dominican order in l959 and was ordained a priest in l966.

Viviano had been interested in Scripture since the age of l2, and was happy to receive the assignment to do a doctorate in Scripture. His education included studies in Washington, D.C., Boston (Harvard University), Durham, North Carolina (Duke University), Rome (Pontifical Biblical Institute), and Jerusalem (Ecole Biblique). He spent shorter times at a rabbinical seminary in Cincinnati and at Tübingen University and the University of Vienna.

His teaching life can be divided into three main periods, each of about 12 years: first in the United States at the Dominican faculty of theology, in close collaboration with a Lutheran and a Reformed seminary. He has always had a strong interest in ecumenism and also an interest in Judaism, and so has served for various bishops' conferences and for the Vatican on dialogue teams. His second teaching period was in Jerusalem. His third period of teaching, still continuing, is at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he is the ordinarius professor for New Testament in French, since 1995.

His special interests are in the gospel according to Matthew and its Jewish background, and, for biblical theological themes, the kingdom of God in history. He also has an interest in the religious value of study and intellectual life. He therefore tries to encourage others who feel the call to pursue studies and to give them counsel as to where to study and with whom.

Besides having published books and essays in these areas, Viviano’s side interests include the relation between Matthew and the gospel according to John the Evangelist, a theology of democracy, the philosophy of history (Hegel), the theology of hope. His thinking is more oriented toward society than to individual psychology, yet he regards the introvert-extrovert distinction as very important.

Viviano enjoys walking, travel (Vienna is his favorite city, Palermo a second choice), classical music, and reading, especially history. He celebrated his 40th anniversary as a priest in 2006. While his mother tongue is the English language and his ancestors hail from southern Italy, Viviano learned French at an early age and uses it regularly. He regards his command of German to be less precise but has a great interest in German culture and language. His station in Switzerland gives him ample opportunity to use three national languages.